by S Breaker
She looked around. “Noah?” she called out, her voice almost too weak to be audible.
No response. Her heart began to pound again—in worry.
Had he been flattened by some airship debris as well, lying on the street, dead? Did one of the trackers manage to shoot him down? Had he been captured altogether, overwhelmed by the dozens of trackers on the street?
“Noah!” she called out again, louder this time.
Still no response.
She swallowed hard with impending panic.
Was she going to have to go on by herself? She had no idea where Noah had parked the Chubby. There was no freaking way she was going to be able to go ahead to GNR by herself. How could she possibly find her way back to Berry’s sub either? How could she possibly get back to her own world? Was she stuck in this alternate world forever? On a rooftop in Paris? Alone?
She was practically hyperventilating. She managed to stand up, groaning as she walked gingerly toward the precipice. “Noah!” she cried out, her tone then carrying something that was very close to hysteria.
Then she finally heard him.
“Laney!”
She looked down to the street and finally spotted him standing on the top of the truck, surrounded by unconscious trackers on the ground. She blew out an incredible sigh of relief, closing her eyes for a moment.
Noah was looking fervently around. He hadn’t seen her yet. “Laney!” he called out. “Where are you?”
“Noah!” Laney called, waving. “Up here!”
His eyes lit up upon seeing her. He instantly vaulted off the truck and began to climb up the fire escape from below Laney’s building, coming up to her rooftop.
She stepped back from the edge. “What happened?” she wanted to know.
He held up the device remote with a grin. “Portable inertial wave generator.”
Laney gasped. “You had another one?”
Noah grinned. “Yeah,” he replied, jumping over the precipice and crossing the rooftop toward her.
And without warning, she flung her arms around him—in panic, in desperation, in relief, in exhaustion.
He looked surprised but didn’t move away. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” he soothed, slowly folding her up in his arms against him. “They’re gone now.”
Laney felt absolutely drained. She shook her head, burying her face in his neck, and after a moment, her shoulders began shaking. “I just…” she started to sob against his chest.
Noah creased his forehead. He shifted his arms around her to pull her closer, tightening his embrace, as though to indicate, without words, that he was there. He was there for her. He would always be there for her.
Laney took a staggered deep breath, holding onto him for dear life. He felt so solid. She could feel the strength in his arms. She felt warm and safe in them…as though she belonged in them, as though she could stay in his arms forever. She felt as though he was part of her. And she had no choice in the matter.
She abruptly pulled away, not looking at him. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with one hand. “I uh…realized that I haven’t actually had a chance to mourn my particular situation before now.”
“Understandable.”
When she looked up, she easily met his gaze. His eyes looked dark blue in the dusk light. She swallowed hard, involuntarily stroking his hair with her fingers.
Noah’s gaze turned sharp as he frowned instantly.
Her heart was pounding in her chest as she quickly put up her hands in defeat, stepping back at least three feet away from him. “I just—I just wanted to say thank you…again,” she explained, breathless.
Noah looked annoyed. “I told you not to do that anymore.”
Laney got even more annoyed. “Then stop saving my life all the time!” she retorted.
He grunted, sounding irate. “Let’s get out of here before they send reinforcements,” he said, moving to pick up the double-rope rappel that had been clipped onto the tracker that had grabbed Laney.
She gasped again as he came up to put his arms around her, but before she could demand what the hell he was trying to do—right after he had huffily told her off about getting too close to him—she heard a whoosh and saw Noah’s HUD shoot the rope line across the way, in order to rappel them both back down to street level.
Noah let her go the instant they touched the ground and simply gestured her to follow behind him again.
Laney pursed her lips in annoyance she watched his back before following suit. Jerk…
“That was a close call.”
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Berry’s disembodied voice coming from somewhere. She met Noah’s suspiciously-narrowed gaze and she looked around. “Berry? Where the hell are you?”
“Look inside your purse.”
She peered cautiously into her bag and as a little robotic “head” poked out.
“What the hell, P.T.? You mean you’ve been stowed away in my bag this entire time?” Laney asked indignantly.
The little robot chirped ambiguously and Berry spoke up, “Enable visual, P.T.”
“Visual? What the damn hell?”
A holographic screen appeared over P.T. with Berry, still back in the mobile submersible, pictured on it.
Noah was shaking his head, then he asked, “Is it safe?”
On the holographic screen, Berry replied, “It’s like I said, radio blackout until you guys get away from at least the tenth arrondissement. Too much interference there from the mesh enclosure. Did you get the copper ink?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Get back to the Chubby and I’ll relay instructions so you can modify the Ident card,” Berry told Noah.
Laney shot Berry’s hologram an annoyed look. “I have a bone to pick with you.”
“What are you talking about?”
She prompted him with raised eyebrows. “Something you forgot to mention? Un petit detail about a certain someone who’s apparently engaged to another certain someone.”
But Berry only made a face, looking puzzled.
“She’s talking about Laney,” Noah spoke up. “Our Laney.”
“What about her?”
“She’s his fiancée!” Laney exclaimed, jerking her thumb toward Noah. “You didn’t tell me he and Laney were engaged.”
“Oh,” Berry blinked. “Didn’t he tell you? I thought you already knew.”
“Um, no,” she said. “He neglected to mention that.”
“You didn’t tell her?” Berry’s question was intended for Noah this time. “I thought you would have had this conversation already, given the fact that you’ve already made out this morning.”
Noah’s jaw stiffened. “There really wasn’t time to explain all that, what with all the running for our lives part.”
They finally arrived at the top of the hill where the Chubby was parked, and Noah immediately went to work, unpacking some tools and the Ident card that was missing its conductive copper ink.
“Sorry, Laney,” Berry was saying. “I would have told you but I thought you already knew.”
“Putting that aside.” Laney turned to Noah, looking baffled. “How on this Earth are you already engaged? How old are you anyway—really?”
“Seventeen,” Noah replied, not looking up from his work.
“No—what? That can’t be right.” She turned to Berry for confirmation.
Berry raised his eyebrows. “Something else maybe we could have mentioned, but I thought you had already caught on.” He paused. “Didn’t it seem strange to you that we’re all this young and already accomplished scientists?”
“I don’t know, Berry.” Laney threw up her hands exasperatedly. “I haven’t really been giving that much thought, what with all the running for my life part.”
Berry smirked before explaining. “Well, another side effect of the cascade bomb event was that it triggered a genetic mutation, so certain parts of our brains, more notably the parts for intellect, mature something almost twice
as fast as they used to. So, in reality, physically we may look seventeen, but our brains are really—”
“Thirty-four? Ew.” Laney wrinkled her nose.
“Ew?” Berry winced, looking offended. “So’s your face,” he mocked.
Noah rolled his eyes again.
She bit her lip. “‘So’s my face’? Nice maturity,” she observed.
And it occurred to Laney why to her, the Louvre had looked like a gaming arcade—because all of its patrons had just been kids. She hadn’t even considered that even the many trackers chasing after her, all in hindsight, looked like a bunch of teens at a Laser Tag game. Perhaps because that didn’t make them look less threatening.
Berry sighed before going on to explain. “Its effects are different for some people. Drawback here is that none of us seem to live for very long either. I mean, Dr. Macon is probably the oldest of us. So yeah, Laney had gone through a brief older men phase,” he relayed, offhand. “I mean, our Laney.”
“Way older. Jeez.” Laney’s eyes widened in distaste.
“There’s an entire paper on the mutations of the genetic enzyme written by Dr. Chambers, another acclaimed scientist. She spearheaded—well, she still is in charge of the extensive research into the biological and genetic changes brought about by the—”
“Berry. Time.” Noah barked.
Berry jumped. “Oh, sorry. T minus 3.”
Noah cursed. “Escaping those damn trackers took up too much time,” he commented, as he made the last modifications to the Ident card using what to Laney looked like a label maker.
Laney watched anxiously over Noah’s shoulder as he held the Ident card up to the detector wand, much as Berry had done earlier in the day.
It emitted a soft but satisfying beep.
And Laney smiled in relief.
“We have to go now. We have to save Laney.”
The Front Door
Friday, 20 March 2020 8:12 p.m.
“It’s freaking freezing up here,” Laney muttered as she and Noah trekked down a snowy mountain.
Noah had apparently landed the Chubby quite a ways from the main GNR laboratory complex to avoid detection from the military patrols, so once again they had to hoof it. Unfortunately, the new spring snow was incredibly cold and annoyingly slippery.
Berry had found Laney a pair of sturdy waterproof boots for the journey but was unable to find a jacket her size thick enough to match the climate, so all Laney could borrow was a regular puffer jacket. She could barely feel her fingers, but she was relieved that at least her toes weren’t going to get frostbite.
“Relax, we’re barely at 1,600 kilometers altitude,” Noah replied.
She rolled her eyes, glancing briefly at the little robot that was riding in her front jacket pocket. “Hear that, P.T.? We’re barely at 1,600 kilometers altitude,” she mimicked sarcastically, shaking her head. “Shouldn’t complain.”
P.T. chirped, as if in reply, even as its gears must have been on the verge of freezing to a halt.
Noah had told her to keep the robot with her in case it proved useful later. Berry did say that P.T. was made of some kind of experimental frost-resistant alloy, so he reckoned it should survive the trip. Theoretically.
They sure do like their theories over here, she thought.
She looked up ahead, past Noah walking in front of her, to whom the cold was like nothing, as she tried to make out anything in the dark. She could only see as far as ten feet ahead of the trail. She frowned. It was getting quite bothersome that she never knew where they were going, ever. “Are we in Switzerland?” she asked Noah.
“No. France.”
She blinked. “I thought the lab was in Geneva.”
“We’re very close to the border. The entire lab complex underground is almost thirty kilometers across. There’s a front door this side of France,” he relayed.
There was a beam of light and a thunderous sound coming from behind them.
Noah jumped quickly, pushing them both under the shelter of a pine tree in the dense forest surrounding the narrow trail.
Laney looked up, feeling the cold wind whipping her face even more harshly than before, and through her eyelashes, she saw a helicopter fly past above them—pretty close above them.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that the government was probably on high alert, being that it was too close to “go time”. She also didn’t want to think about the highly likely possibility that they had already figured out she and Noah were heading this way, or if not, that they were already here.
But the helicopter flew past without incident and Noah breathed easier.
Except Noah had pushed Laney against the tree and was leaning very close to her again. Laney could see the puffs of his breath from the cold, as she could see hers. He seemed to realize how close he was to her too, and met her gaze briefly, looking uncomfortable, before he abruptly pulled away. “It’s gone,” he said.
Laney’s mouth felt dry. She tried to swallow anyway.
The tension between them had escalated even more since the streets of Paris. It was super annoying! She thought, following behind him again. He had already done as much as had started to avoid looking at her. And she only made sure to stare at his back. All she needed to do was follow behind him anyway. She figured, with any luck, they’d finally find the genius, incredible, amazing “Super Laney”, who would simply snap her fingers and put everything back right.
And then I can finally go home, Laney thought fervently.
After a while, Noah stopped walking again. This time he did look at her, meaningfully.
They had arrived at the front door.
What is that? Laney wondered in puzzlement.
The “Front Door” from the outside looked like an old rickety ice fishing hut—a very misplaced, old rickety ice fishing hut, as there were no lakes or rivers anywhere nearby.
It was a square little hut, almost hidden among the large trees, with wooden panels, a faded green wooden door in the front, and a smoking metal pipe sticking out from the corrugated iron roof.
There were no markings anywhere to indicate that it was the entrance to any sort of important laboratory or government facility, which, Laney figured, was probably the point. And if she hadn’t just seen a helicopter fly by, she would have assumed too, that this entire area of the mountain was completely uninhabited.
Noah jerked his thumb to point to the lone “guard” sitting outside, in plain winter clothes. “There should be about four more guards inside,” he whispered low, then checked his HUD again. “I need you to distract him. I’ll sneak behind him to take care of the others. We have to be fast or they might raise an alarm.”
Laney huffed. “In case you forgot, I’m not a freaking spy, Noah Donovan,” she replied hoarsely. Then she rolled her eyes, adding impatiently, “But—I’ll think of something.”
He met her gaze and held it for a moment as though he wanted to say something. But he nodded shortly and then moved away so subtly, he very nearly simply disappeared into the thick brush.
She blinked. Wow. Talk about incognito. Then she refocused, taking a deep breath to formulate her own plan. “P.T.,” she started in a whisper to her pocket. “Are you ready to be useful?”
It must have looked like a vole burrowing under the snow to the guard sitting at the door.
Laney slowly crept up behind P.T. as the little robot displayed a hologram of a snowy backdrop in front of her, making for the perfect camouflage, rendering her practically invisible to the guard. She could still see him, but as far as she could tell, he couldn’t see her at all. She tried not to breathe too loudly as they moved closer to the hut.
The guard didn’t move an inch, didn’t look like he suspected anything—yet.
Almost there, Laney thought, biting her lip as she moved into position, toward the side of the guard where his giant-ass laser rifle was not.
She swallowed hard, looking down at P.T. She wasn’t sure if the robot could read facial cues in this environment
so she signaled it to execute the next step by calling, “Now P.T.”
In a flash, the guard heard her and jumped, startled. P.T.’s hologram turned off as the robot clamped its “arm” onto the guard’s large weapon to drag it quickly away across the snowy path, away from them.
The guard instantly spotted Laney behind him. She reared back to swing her heavy bag up at his head again.
Thunk.
Except this time, the big, quarterback-gorilla guard did not go down. He gritted his teeth and turned slowly to meet Laney’s wary gaze.
“Oh shit.” She tried to scramble away backward and tripped on some ice boulders, falling back onto the snow. Her eyes widened as she watched the guard reach behind him for what looked like a smaller version of the giant-ass laser rifle and begin to raise it toward her head.
Laney gasped, but before the guard could take proper aim at her, she heard another loud thunk, and the big guard crumpled to the ground. She blew out a breath, looking up.
Noah had whacked the guard behind the head with another giant-ass laser rifle that he had acquired from inside the hut. He shot her an annoyed look. “What are you doing?”
She blinked. “I didn’t know he had another weapon.”
“Of course he had another weapon!” he told her in ridicule before he hoisted up the unconscious guard to bind and pose him, sitting back on his stoop outside the hut, so as not to give immediate suspicion to air patrols passing by. Then Noah rolled his eyes and beckoned her to come inside. “Come on then.”
She made a face, mimicking him obstinately, before sighing. “Let’s go, P.T.” She waved the robot back over, then bent down to pick it up to put it back in her pocket.
The inside of the ice fishing hut looked nothing like the outside. It was a clean room, with large off-white tiles up and down all six sides of it. The room was bare, except for the heap of guards that Noah had dispatched off to one side, Laney noticed with a wrinkled nose, and a nondescript white door at the end of the room.
“Give me the robot.” Noah put his hand out.